Democrats in the Senate failed to pass a resolution that would have reversed President Donald Trump’s executive order on ‘Unleashing American Energy’ in a 53-47 party-line vote.

The White House argued that scrapping the emergency would endanger nearly 900,000 jobs and have a negative $3.6 trillion impact. The order encourages domestic energy production on federal lands and nixed a Biden-era push to strive for more electric vehicles on the road.

‘Tim Kaine wants to impoverish Americans. President Donald Trump’s executive order brings America into the future and unleashes prosperity. Senator [Tim] Kaine wants to cost the economy trillions and risk losing nearly a million jobs,’ deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

The resolution was introduced by Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Martin Heinrich as they argued the emergency declaration made by the president would ‘benefit big oil’ but harm Americans, according to a statement provided by the lawmakers to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

‘The Trump Administration is living in a fantasy land,’ the Democratic senators stated. ‘Energy demand is high and only getting higher, which is why it’s great that America is producing more energy than at any other point in our history. Decreasing the supply of American-made energy when demand is high is the quickest way to raise prices—and that’s exactly what President Trump’s sham energy emergency will do.’

‘By tampering with the market to favor some forms of energy over others and making it easier for fossil fuel companies to take Americans’ private property, Trump’s emergency declaration will benefit Big Oil, but leave American consumers with fewer choices and higher bills.’

Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., slammed the resolution as Democrats ‘trying to block common-sense measures’ to tackle ‘painfully high prices.’

‘After four years of reckless regulations and restrictions, energy prices have jumped 31 percent. Families are feeling it all across the country. To most Americans, this is the definition of an energy emergency. To Senate Democrats, it’s an inconvenient truth,’ he said in a floor speech.  

‘This National Energy Emergency is part of President Trump’s swift actions, actions to unleash American energy. It’s part this broader vision of affordable, reliable, available American energy. Democrats oppose that,’ the Republican continued.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., also slammed the Democrat effort: ‘Thanks in substantial part to a movement to shut down fossil-fuel-fired power plants before reliable sources of clean energy are available to replace them, America is running out of power even as we face huge new power demands. … If we don’t take action, we are going to be facing some very serious problems in the very near future, so I’m grateful to have a president who recognizes and acknowledges the energy emergency facing our nation.’

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, said, ‘Senate Democrats are yet again attempting to block President Trump’s efforts to secure cheaper, more reliable energy—just when America needs it most. Their message to families is clear: pay more, expect less.’

The Trump administration emphasized that ending the emergency would bring back Biden-era policies. A White House document obtained by Fox News Digital stressed that under those policies, during Biden’s first two years, families spent an extra $10,000 in energy costs on average, citing a study published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. 

The document cited that estimates of liquefied natural gas (LNG) growth in the new administration were projected to bring in half a million jobs annually and boost U.S. GDP by $1.3 trillion through 2040, per a study by S&P Global in December. 

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard recalled the energizing atmosphere inside President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday at the White House, as his team comes together in record time. 

‘What I got was a high level of energy and really just a positive outlook,’ Gabbard told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview at the White House after the meeting. 

‘We are all in sprint mode,’ she said. 

‘We have a Cabinet full of great Americans who are dedicated to serving our country and the American people, ensuring safety, security, freedom and prosperity,’ the national intelligence director added, noting the inspiration that billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already sparked in Trump’s administration. 

Per Gabbard, part of what makes Trump’s Cabinet so special is that ‘most of us have known each other for a long time. We’ve worked together. We’re actually friends.’

She went as far as calling this level of collaboration ‘unprecedented’ in a president’s Cabinet. 

Trump’s second-term Cabinet has accomplished several firsts, including appointing Gabbard as the first Pacific Islander director of national intelligence, Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the first Hispanic in his role and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the first Republican Cabinet member who is openly gay. 

Additionally, Trump has already surpassed the number of women he had in his first Cabinet, with five appointed already and eight nominated in total. 

But, ‘you don’t hear anything about it,’ Gabbard pointed out. 

‘I experienced this from my former party, even when I ran for president in 2020, that they were all about [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] unless they didn’t like what a woman of color had to say, for example.’

The White House will now oversee which news outlets will be part of the White House press pool, rather than the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), the White House press secretary said Tuesday. 

While the WHCA customarily has had the authority to choose the rotation of news outlets that have access to the president in the Oval Office and other areas with limited access, the Trump administration is upending that policy. 

‘Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join, fear not,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. ‘But we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.’ 

But President Donald Trump’s White House isn’t the only one to roll out controversial policies regarding press access. 

In 2023, more than 440 reporters lost press credentials after President Joe Biden’s White House modified its rules for eligibility for permanent passes.

Credentialed White House press members dropped from 1,417 members to 975 members after the White House unveiled new standards requiring an annual renewal of hard passes, Politico reported in 2023. Journalists without hard passes were still authorized to apply for day passes to the White House. 

The Biden White House policy was launched in May 2023 and required reporters to prove employment with ‘an organization whose principal business is news dissemination’ and show that they have ‘accessed the White House campus at least once during the prior six months for work, or have proof of employment within the last three months to cover the White House.’

The Biden White House defended its decision to cut off routine access to these reporters, claiming many of the journalists whose passes expired hadn’t accessed the White House in the previous three months. 

‘At the time we initiated this process in early May, roughly 40% of hard pass holders had not accessed the White House complex in the prior 90 days,’ the White House said in a 2023 statement to Politico. ‘We think this demonstrates we’ve led a thoughtful and thorough process that preserves robust media access to campus for everyone who needs it — whether that be with a hard pass or a day pass.’

Leavitt announced in January that the Trump White House would work to ‘restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration.’ 

On Tuesday, Leavitt said the White House’s decision aimed to ‘give the power back to the people’ in an attempt to ensure that ‘all journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table.’ 

In response, WHCA President Eugene Daniels said the WHCA did not receive any notice in advance of the White House’s decision and said the move ‘tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.’

‘It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president,’ Daniels said. ‘In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.’

Fox News’ Gabriel Hays contributed to this report. 

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Wednesday that Iran has produced dramatically more uranium that can be used in six atomic bombs and stressed that Tehran has made no progress on resolving outstanding issues.

‘The significantly increased production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,’ the IAEA noted in a report according to Reuters.

Last week, Fox News Digital reported that, according to Iranian regime media outlets, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Ebrahim Jabbari said, ‘Operation True Promise 3 will be carried out at the right time, with precision, and on a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground.’

Tehran’s regime launched two massive aerial attacks against the Jewish state, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, in 2024.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and President Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel issued a dire warning about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s desire to wipe Israel and the United States off the map.

Huckabee told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on ‘Mornings with Maria,’ on Wednesday that Iran’s regime is ‘crazy enough to use it’ with respect to an atomic bomb and ‘when someone keeps telling you they’re going to kill you at some point, you better take them seriously, and you better preempt it before they get the shot off.’

He added, ‘The Iranians have to be taken seriously. They constantly said and never backed away from the fact that Israel is the appetizer, but the United States is the entree. They don’t want to just annihilate Israel, which they do. Yeah. They want ultimately to annihilate the rest of us as well.’

Trump reimposed his maximum pressure economic campaign on Iran’s clerical state to prevent the rogue regime from completing the construction of a nuclear weapon and stop its sponsorship of terrorism across the world. The U.S. State Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations has designated Iran’s regime as a state-sponsor of terrorism.

Huckabee said, ‘Let’s be real clear. When President Trump was in office in his first term, the maximum pressure that he put on Iran bankrupted them. President Trump didn’t have to bomb them, but he bankrupted them. They didn’t have any money, and they couldn’t fund the hoodies, Hezbollah or Hamas. Joe Biden comes in, takes the pressure off. They get money again. They fund terrorism. They fund the building of their bomb. And now we’re having to go back. Thank goodness the president has reestablished the pressure on Iran economically. That’s a plus.’

Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran UANI, told Fox News Digital, ‘I think Gov. Huckabee’s comments underscore the danger Iran’s regime poses to the U.S. and our allies and partners. It’s why presidents for years have stated an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable and that the U.S. will use all instruments of national power to prevent that outcome. One of the pillars of Tehran’s grand strategy is the eradication of Israel and another is anti-Americanism.’

He continued, ‘That won’t change as long as the Islamic Republic remains the Islamic Republic and Ali Khamenei or a like-minded successor is the decision-maker. This is why weakening the regime and depriving it of resources — through maximum pressure and peace through strength — is necessary.’

Reuters contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump wants to recover billions of dollars’ worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan following their 2021 withdrawal from the country.

‘We left billions, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment behind, brand new trucks,’ Trump said during his first Cabinet meeting Wednesday. ‘You see them display it every year, or their little roadway, someplace where they have a road and they drive the, you know, waving the flag and talking about America … that’s all the top of the line stuff. I think we should get a lot of that equipment back.’

The Taliban seized most of the more than $7 billion worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan at the time of the withdrawal in August 2021, according to a Department of Defense report released in 2022. 

Although U.S. troops removed or destroyed much of the major equipment that forces used during the drawdown, military equipment including aircraft, ground vehicles and other weapons were left in Afghanistan. The condition of these items remains unknown, but the Pentagon said in the report it would likely fail operationally without maintenance from U.S. contractors. 

More details about how the U.S. would retrieve the equipment left in Afghanistan were not immediately available, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

President Joe Biden moved to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, building upon plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the war in the region.

Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during the withdrawal process due to a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the Taliban quickly seized control of Kabul. 

Trump’s comments Wednesday came in response to questions about whether he was considering firing military leaders who oversaw the withdrawal. While Trump said he wouldn’t instruct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on what actions the Pentagon should take ousting those leaders, Trump said he would ‘fire every single one of them.’ 

Even so, several key leaders involved in the withdrawal are no longer serving in the military. The commander of U.S. Central Command at the time of the withdrawal, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., has since retired, and in 2024 took full ownership for the loss of U.S. troops. 

‘I was the overall commander, and I and I alone bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,’ McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March 2024.

Additionally, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers at the same hearing that he believed the evacuation should have occurred sooner and that multiple factors contributed to failures in the withdrawal. Both McKenzie and Milley told lawmakers they advised Biden to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan after pulling most U.S. forces. 

‘The outcome in Afghanistan was the result of many decisions from many years of war,’ Milley told lawmakers. ‘Like any complex phenomena, there was no single causal factor that determined the outcome.’

U.S. Central Command oversees military operations in the Middle East. 

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Republican lawmakers are preparing a slate of legislation to rein in the judiciary as the Trump administration battles multiple federal courts over its policies.

‘Everything’s on the table,’ Jordan told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘We’re looking to be as helpful as possible.’

As one example, Jordan signaled he expected an eventual vote on a bill introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the courts subcommittee of Jordan’s panel, which would limit federal judges’ ability to order nationwide injunctions in response to more localized cases.

‘We’ve looked at different ways to draft legislation. But we think that makes sense,’ Jordan said. ‘That’s something that we can look at doing and maybe even, you know, try to move fairly quick on that bill.’

Another idea Jordan mentioned was taking those nationwide injunctions to stop presidential policies and providing an avenue for an expedited appeal to potentially get the order limited quickly.

The Ohio Republican also mentioned reintroducing legislation from the previous Congress, when Democrats controlled the Senate and White House.

One such bill by Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., would allow presidents or vice presidents involved in lawsuits or other prosecutions to move those cases to federal court, if they were in a lower circuit.

But Jordan said the measure would be widened beyond just those two roles.

‘I think the bill we’re looking at this year would say not just the president, vice president, but ‘federal official,’’ he explained.

Legislation that passed the House and Senate under former President Joe Biden to expand the number of federal judgeships across the country could also come back up for a vote, Jordan said.

The bill, which would have added 66 new judges, passed the Senate in August of last year but was not taken up by the House until December, after President Donald Trump won the election.

Unlike the Senate vote, however, the majority of Democrats in the House did not support the bill. Biden vetoed it in January as one of his last major acts as president.

‘Everyone thinks we need more judges. I think we do. We had legislation that every Democrat in the Senate supported that would allow the presidents over the next 10 years, you know, whoever happens to be president, to appoint those,’ Jordan said.

‘We brought it up, but the Democrats voted against it after President Trump won. So we’ll try to pass that again and see if we can get the votes.’

Jordan said his staff has been in consistent communication with Speaker Mike Johnson’s office about moving legislation to the House floor.

It comes after dozens of activists, left-wing groups and other entities filed myriad lawsuits against Trump’s executive orders during his first few weeks as president.

Trump policies from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to birthright citizenship limitations have been challenged.

Trump’s plans to freeze federal aid have also been ordered blocked by federal courts.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Johnson’s office for comment.

President Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to speak at the top of the first full Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to discuss the progress made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Musk, standing in his signature black suit jacket with a T-shirt underneath, spoke at the meeting in which the media was present and made some clarifications about what he and DOGE are doing, as well as a recent email sent to government employees.

‘I actually just call myself a humble tech support hero,’ Musk stated. ‘As crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work of the DOGE team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems,’ Musk said, saying the computer systems are ‘extremely old’ and there are many mistakes in the systems. 

‘So we are actually tech support,’ Musk said. ‘It’s ironic, but it’s true.’ 

He also defended last week’s productivity email to federal employees. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday in a press briefing that more than 1 million federal workers participated in the Musk and the Office of Personnel Management directive to provide a bullet-point list of their work accomplishments from the previous week.

‘I think that email was perhaps interpreted as a performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review. Do you have a pulse?’ Musk said. ‘And if you have a pulse and two neurons, you could reply to an email.’ 

Musk said the task was ‘not a high bar’ and should be something ‘anyone could accomplish.’ 

‘But what we are trying to get to the bottom of is we think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond,’ Musk said. ‘And some people who are not real people … like they’re fictional individuals that are collecting a paycheck … well somebody is collecting paychecks on a fictional individual, so we’re just literally trying to figure out are these people real, are they alive, and can they write email, which I think is a reasonable expectation.’ 

Musk explained that ‘our goal is not to be capricious or unfair’ in how DOGE operates, and that the ‘overall goal here with the DOGE team is to help address the enormous deficit.’ 

‘We simply cannot sustain a country on $2 trillion deficits,’ Musk said, noting the interest on the national debt exceeds Defense Department spending. 

‘We spend a lot on the Defense Department, but we’re spending like $1 trillion on interest. If this continues, the country will go, become de facto bankrupt. It’s not an optional thing.’ 

‘It is a central thing that’s the reason I’m here. And taking a lot of flack, and getting a lot of death threats, by the way,’ Musk added. ‘But if we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done.’ 

Musk said he was confident that DOGE could find $1 trillion in savings, or roughly 15% of the $7 trillion budget, and thanked Cabinet members for their support. 

‘We do need to move quickly,’ Musk said. ‘If we’re to achieve $1 trillion deficit reduction in financial year 2026, it requires saving $4 billion per day every day from now through the end of September. But we can do it. And we will do it.’